One year.

A year really makes a difference. In one year, a WHOLE lot can change. In just 365 days I went through a complete metamorphosis that, to this day, still amazes me. June 2007 I made a life changing decision that set in motion this transformation. I was scared, and reckless, and I fumbled through and came out on the other side, a little wearier, a little braver, but alive nonetheless :)

By September, I put a stop to one of the BIGGEST mistakes I have EVER made in my life. My dear readers, let me tell you a little secret...I had an affair. A Full-on, lowest of the low, scum of the earth kind of affair. And that's exactly how I felt, the entire time. I try to look back on it as a very important lesson learned. I learned that there is NO substitute for the truth. I learned that nobody deserves to be treated with blatant disregard and deceit. I learned that a catalyst for a change isn't always the way to go. I needed a way out of something I wasn't happy in, and instead of trusting my gut-instinct, I took the coward's way out and did something that goes completely against my morals and beliefs. I used this affair as a way to back out of an engagement that I was miserable in, and I hurt SO many people in the process.

Since then, I've had many soul-searching days, asking God for forgiveness and trying to make peace with a very dark side of myself that I never thought I'd have to confront. I've come to terms with my actions, and I've put it behind me in order to start moving forward, towards the better things I knew my life had to offer.

During that six months, I barely recognized myself. Who was this girl sneaking around, lying to people I love, running from the one person I should have been turning to? I felt terrible. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I couldn't stop. I couldn't face what the real issue was.

My parents have always taught me to follow my heart, but I know during that time, whatever was in my heart that I was following was evil and self-destructive. Once I admitted what I had done, I only sunk deeper. I know people that I love and respect were so disappointed in me, but somehow, even THAT didn't make me stop.

I believe life is a journey, one we must make on our own at times. Even if there are red flags and huge signs right in front of our eyes warning us "beware" and "turn back", sometimes we have to find out the hard way. I wish that I had learned these lessons a different way. I'm not a stupid person, I just do stupid things sometimes. Isn't that one of our greatest weaknesses as a human being? Knowing something is wrong, and doing it anyway?

At this point, I'm glad I can look back and know that I've come so far. I'm glad that I have the knowledge and understanding to know that what I did was wrong, and not be a person who makes excuses to make themselves feel better about something stupid they did.

I know I will never sink that low again. I know I will never hurt myself and others like that again. It feels cleansing to write this. To affirm that I know I've come so far from a rock-bottom I will never come close to glimpsing again. I owe it to myself, and to the people I love and care about to never dwell in that place of sin again.

A big weight is lifted, and I knew that once I could admit this to my readers (if you're still out there...) that I could begin to regroup and move forward with this story.

Thanks for reading.

-B

Hello, again...

It has been so long since I've written on this blog. A lot has happened in that time. The main thing being that The Boyfriend is now The Fiance, having proposed back in March. We just had our one year anniversary on Monday, October 13th. Some people may think that being engaged after only 6 months is a huge mistake and a judgment lapse, but I can assure you, it is more right than I can explain.

My main reason for starting this blog was to tell my story about the rocky relationship with The Ex, but after writing for a couple months, it became clear that it was doing more harm than good in my current relationship. I think the fact that we had just started out together, and were still finding our foothold in the partnership maybe made things feel a little uncertain when it came to me spilling my guts about a past relationship. We've since worked past that, and are all the more strong for all of the experiences we've had since then.

I have discovered a whole other side to myself in this relationship. I've learned that good, healthy communication is key and that sharing yourself with another person completely can be rewarding and just plain awesome!

The title of this blog is "The Runaway Bride: Tales From the Edge and Back"...well, I'm starting my journey to the "and Back" part, but there is still so much to say.

So, I'm back. For better or worse, this story will get told, including a re-cap of the last AMAZING year.

Co-habitating with The Ex

April asked "What was it like living together?"

Making the decision to live together was a pretty big deal for both of us. I am fairly certain that The Ex was ready to move in together before I had really warmed up to the idea. He wasn't very happy in his current living situation and I think that had a lot of weight on his decision that he was ready to take that next step. In fact, not long after we got engaged, we started looking for houses together, even going so far as to put a bid on one. Except I completely panicked. I wasn't ready at all. I felt really pressured to make this huge leap, and to act like it was what I wanted as well. And I DID want it, just not RIGHT then.

We waited a while longer, knowing that it wasn't something we should do if only one of us were truly okay with it. Actually, during that time, The Ex ended up breaking the engagement (but that's another entry altogether.)

When we both finally decided that we were ready, we moved in together. At first, it almost felt like we were a couple of little kids, playing house. Living together definitely had it's ups and downs. We tried to arrange some sort of "chores list" and divide it evenly, but we didn't always end up sticking to that. I quickly learned that this person I was living with was completely anal about things. The hardest thing about that was feeling like I would never measure up to his standards. For example, we did all the grocery shopping together. When we got home, I was quickly ushered from the kitchen so he could put all the groceries away. When I came back, HOLY ORGANIZED GROCERIES, Batman!! It was like we had a little section of Kroger right there in our kitchen. I admit, it made things easy to find, but I had to wonder a little about a guy who would take so much time making sure that the canned goods were organized by height and alphabetized (slight exaggeration here hehehehe).

It was pretty easy for us to agree on decor. We both liked neutral things, so that helped. Of course, I had to add those extra little touches that really make a house feel like home. I arranged candles and whatnot on the tables in a way that I thought looked pulled together, but creative at the same time. On weekends when we'd do chores, The Ex would be dusting and I'd come back to find all the candles lined up and pushed to the back edge of the tables. BORING. I wouldn't say anything, happy to have his help with chores, but I'd always end up moving them back only to have him move them again the next weekend. These kinds of silent battles went on constantly. But I suppose those are just the little quirks about somebody that you learn to live with...or not.

We didn't fight often about things like cleaning, but one of the BIGGEST fights we had was about laundry. It was horrible. If you've ever had anyone make you feel like complete crap over something so stupid and petty, you know what I mean. The Ex had this way of making me feel like I couldn't do anything right. Let me start by saying that I know how to do laundry. I lived away at college and I did my own laundry all the time. In fact, a CHIMP can do laundry. It isn't exactly brain surgery. The Laundry Fight of 2007 started because of a defective Downy Ball. For 3 loads in a row, that damn contraption refused to disperse it's fabric softener insides onto our clothes. At that point, I was so frustrated...I didn't want CRISPY clothes, I wanted SOFT ones. The Ex happened to be standing by me when I was pulling the Kentucky Fried clothes from the washing machine and I mentioned to him that the Ball of Doom wasn't working. Immediately he laid into me, saying it didn't work because I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO DO LAUNDRY! What the hell?? Had I not been doing his laundry for the past 5 months?! Who did he think did it?? The laundry fairy?

This was basically the most retarded fight I had ever been involved in to this day. It definitely made me realize that choosing to live with your significant other isn't something that should be taken lightly. This is where the virtue Patience really comes into play. Did you ever notice how in that verse from the Bible about "Love is..." PATIENCE is mentioned FIRST AND FOREMOST?! Well, that is for a darn good reason. You better have boat loads of patience if you are going to share your space with another person. I also learned that it's important to choose your battles.

Sure, it's annoying to have someone critique your methods on things you've been doing for a long time. And you'll get sick of the way a person piles their clothes in a corner after taking them off. But there are bigger things to spend your time on. Living together was NOT always easy. It's a good idea to have some room in the house where you can go be by yourself and just do your own thing for a while. Living with the person you love the most can be a lot of fun, too, if you remember that it's something you are BOTH in together.

I'm not sure if moving in with The Ex was detrimental to our relationship, and I'll never know, but I do think that we both learned a lot from that experience, and any lesson learned is a good one.

Patience and compromise. Those are the TWO biggest things you'll learn about living with someone else.

Oh, and that the granola bars always go to the left of the crackers.

Let's Take it From the Top

Last post I asked my few (but no less loved!) readers to ask any questions to help with the recent writer's block jag. So, here we go.

First question:
"-how you decided to "forgive" him and try to make things worse???" (I'm going to assume here that she meant how I tried to make things better, and not worse. Am I right, Wanda??)

I admit, it took a LOT for me to be able to push this whole incident of his cheating to the back of my mind and move on. I would think it's safe to say that most women have this ingrained fear of being second best, or not measuring up. When someone cheats on you, it's easy to give in to that fear and let it consume you. I really had to take a big step back from our relationship at that point. I had to learn that The Ex cheating on me was HIS problem, not mine. He cheated for reasons having nothing at all to do with me. Only HE was responsible for his actions. I know that I kept wrestling with the idea that if I had been a better person, nicer, prettier, more SOMETHING that it wouldn't have happened. But that's really not the case. Once I came to realize that it wasn't my fault he cheated I had to make the decision to either leave him or to forgive him and move forward.

I was raised to believe that it's important to forgive people. People deserve second chances (and, obviously in this case, third and fourth and fifth chances too). We broke up for a couple weeks while I was dealing with this betrayal. We stayed in contact and The Ex took every opportunity to show me how sorry he was. I truly felt that deep down, he WAS sorry. I could tell he felt ashamed of what he'd done, and the fact that he told me right away instead of hiding it from me said a lot for him.

Honestly, I wanted to forgive him a lot sooner than I did, but I felt like I had this point to prove. I had to make him know that he couldn't betray me like that without some sort of consequence. When I eventually did decide that I would forgive him and give our relationship another try, I was so cold to him. I would get into these moods where I would just say the most scathing, hurtful things to him in some twisted attempt to make him hurt as much as I had. And perhaps if I was doing those things to him, I hadn't TRULY forgiven him, not completely. I'm not proud of the way I treated him after that, but I understand where those feelings came from.

A lot of work on my part went into rebuilding my trust in him. Right away I made him get screened for STD's, and for a long time after that there was very little physical contact between us. Even holding his hand would make me cringe. My overactive imagination would play these scenes of him with her over and over in my mind. I kept thinking "he touched HER with those hands." or "she was here, in this room, on his bed." The best way to describe how I felt at that point was un-safe. I don't know how to explain it exactly, except that it felt like all the familiar things about him were no longer just mine. All the things that I thought were shared only between us were now tainted by this outside person he had chose to let in.

Eventually, over time, things got a little easier to deal with. The wounds from this healed over but left proof that they were there at one point. I would constantly catch myself doubting his loyalty, lashing out at him when I thought he had done something shady. And maybe I never completely got over it...

A Lightbulb Went Off

At 5:30 this morning, when I woke up next to the most fabulous boy ever, I got a really great idea:

Dear readers, you can help me get over this "blah" non-writing period. Send me some suggestions, things about this whole ordeal that you're curious about. Or ask me some questions. Something, ANYTHING to get the ball rolling again.

Do my dirty work.

Thanks in advance.

XOXO

It's Been A While...

I haven't written in almost 3 weeks. Writer's block. There is just so much to say. It could easily come pouring out, spilling forth in a way that would probably only ever make sense to me.
How do you tell the world all the thoughts swirling around inside your head in a way that they can understand and relate to? Maybe this isn't so much "writer's block" as it is "writer's flood".
I want this to come out smoothly, making complete sense, no wrinkles or hang-ups to figure out. No tangled webs to sift through.

I want to talk about the things we sacrifice to be with someone, and all the ways it's so easy to lose yourself along the way. I want to talk about getting swept up in something bigger than yourself, and finding that it wasn't where you wanted to go at all. I want to talk about the fights, the drama with almost-in-laws. I want to talk about sticking up for myself, FINALLY.

So there's a sort of map to where this journey will go. There will be more stops on the way. Let me finish sorting this out.

Public Service Announcement to Unwelcome Commenters

"so all i have to ask is you cheated on him the day after you two made it official! Look i am ok with u saying these things but dont think that you are the good one in this. It takes two to make it work and there are many things i could write to make u look as bad as anthony on this so maybe u should write about the truth in the next one!"


Someone who chose the enormously intelligent moniker "tokeindbuds" left that comment for me on my last entry. (By the way, were they possibly "tokeindbuds" when they wrote that comment? Holy Bad Grammar, Batman!)

First of all, I never once claimed to be "the good one". I never once said that I did not have my own transgressions and mistakes in this relationship. But this is MY story, from MY point of view. If The Ex would like to go ahead and write his version of things, he is more than welcome to.

I didn't plan on mentioning this until later entries, but I am almost certain that NOTHING I did ever amounted to The Ex going to jail for threatening to "bash [your] head in with a hammer" and choking me with his bare hands on TWO seperate occasions.

If anyone out there feels that what I am doing is wrong or deceitful or one-sided, then don't read this. I am telling 100% of the truth. If you can't handle it, move along. If you are The Ex, or one of his "bud toking" friends, I would say your time would be better spent elsewhere. In the future, any further comments from the peanut gallery will be deleted.

P.S. Hey, Ex-fiance, go ahead and thank your friend for telling everyone out there your name. Notice how I chose to keep you anonymous, and your friend called you out. Perhaps someone was a little too high to remember to use some discretion.

P.P.S. This so-called "cheating" that Super Stoner alludes to was a kiss. One. A far cry from sleeping with someone else while completely inebriated on pills and alcohol after telling someone you love them just a few weeks earlier.

Thank you. Have a nice day.